New ASOC president begins work on shared governance

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Jacques Lesure (senior) leads the first ASOC Senate meeting of the year, setting goals and expectations in the JSC Commons at Occidental College in Los Angeles, on Monday, Sept. 10, 2018. Victoria Winter/The Occidental.
The Associated Students of Occidental College (ASOC) Senate gathered Sept. 10 at 8 p.m. in the Johnson Student Center Commons for their first meeting of the academic year. The new ASOC president, Jacques Lesure (senior), emphasized his platform of shared governance –– which he ran on last spring –– and discussed the group’s priorities for the year.

According to an April 2018 opinion article by Lesure, shared governance involves dividing responsibility and decision making between stakeholders — in this case, students and administrators.

In an email sent to the student body Aug. 31, Lesure outlined three themes of shared governance that he intends to focus on. According to his email, the first goal focuses on transparency and increasing student access to important information about the operations of the college. To accomplish this goal, Lesure said that he and ASOC intend to create a guidebook with summaries of different administrative departments and their key functions. Secondly, he highlighted a need for meaningful student leadership.

“I want to get students at the center [of decision making on campus], so nothing can function without students,” said Lesure.

He said he sees a need for outlined student responsibilities so that there are clear expectations of how student input will impact decisions.

Jacques Lesure (senior) speaks to The Occidental about his ideas of shared governance and plans for his term as ASOC president this year at Occidental College in Los Angeles, on Tuesday Sept. 11, 2018. Victoria Winter/ The Occidental

This is not the first attempt to promote shared governance on Occidental’s campus. In November 2016, a Shared Governance Working Group began meeting to discuss transparency and inclusive decision making. Lesure was a member of the working group serving as a representative for Diversity and Equity Board (DEB). However, Lesure’s platform as ASOC president has revived conversations about the issue, as the working group no longer meets.

Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Wendy Sternberg has met with Lesure twice to discuss his plans for the year.

“I think it is always a good thing when students show that level of engagement and want to be involved in understanding how the institution operates,” Sternberg said.

Lesure’s third goal is to increase programming and collaboration within ASOC. This includes working with DEB, the Renewable Energy and Sustainability Fund (RESF) and Honor Board. Lesure served on DEB for three semesters prior to becoming ASOC president. Kayla Williams (junior), the club liaison for DEB, said she was pleased with Lesure’s emphasis on collaboration across ASOC branches and said that she hopes the entire student body becomes more engaged.

“The shift to shared governance allows all of us to be equally responsible for making sure the campus is how we want it, including people who aren’t in ASOC,” Williams said.

Lesure outlined plans for Senate to host more community events, such as town halls, with the goal of making ASOC leaders more accountable to the student body. He said he has already met with a variety of students, faculty, staff and administrators to communicate his plans for the school year and listen to their goals.

Lesure said that he views the enthusiasm around the mission of shared governance as his biggest success so far, mentioning how exciting it is to have engaged first-year students.

Tamara Himmelstein, assistant dean of students and director of student life, who acts as an adviser for Senate, also emphasized the importance of making ASOC more visible to students, in hopes that they will be able to better utilize its resources.

“The way to get people on board and help you make your platform a reality is to build relationships first. And that’s what he’s doing right now,” Himmelstein said.

Sternberg also hopes that ASOC’s push for student involvement will make shared governance a reality.

“It’s really a privilege for the members of a community to be able to have a say in how things operate, but the burden of shared governance is the time that it takes,” Sternberg said.

According to Williams, decision making in the past has generally followed a top-down model, with student and administrative leaders having a majority of the responsibility. This has strained some student leaders given the demanding workload and led to frequent changes in leadership, according to Lesure. ASOC is making plans to provide resources for student leaders to address this problem.

Williams also described the current disconnect between the student body and administration.

“We don’t really understand what either [group] is looking for out of the relationship,” Williams said.

Lesure said he has a new vision for this relationship.

“[The student body] democratically determines what we want … and [the administration] delivers,” Lesure said. “I think that’s what it should look like.”

Himmelstein said that Lesure’s platform and commitment to outreach are impressive.

“I think that his legacy will be to begin this process of shared governance, and I think it’s not going to end when Jacques is done being [ASOC] president,” Himmelstein said. “I think it’s really just the beginning.”

Williams added that Lesure’s main goals are realistic and attainable.

“I don’t think that he is asking for something that’s undoable,” Williams said. “As a student body, it’s our job to make sure that it gets done.”

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